Brewing

Startups need partners, not plain capital

We believe capital never comes first. At Coffee Ventures, we put foundations first. We partner up with founders by fostering discipline in product management and culture of entrepreneurship.

At the same time, we seek founders who demonstrate discipline in developing hypothesis to a problem, depth of market understanding through meaningful experimentation, and resourcefulness in taking products to market.

Achieve breakout growth

Current focus is on startups that address Southeast Asia markets, and can achieve breakout growth through our network and support. Investment areas include health & wellness, education, finance, enterprise, artificial intelligence and marketplace.

Recent Investments

Past Startups

We have invested in and worked alongside founders of these great startups at our past ventures.

Southeast Asia

USA

People

Eddy LeeFounder & Managing Partner

Eddy Lee, PhD has invested in and supported more than 50 startups predominantly in the US, Singapore and Indonesia. Interest areas include financial, health, IoT, artificial intelligence, and marketplace technologies. He relocated from the Silicon Valley to Southeast Asia and cofounded Coffee Ventures so as to tackle unmet needs in emerging markets. The early stage fund focuses on people development, product-market iteration, and go-to-market strategy

At Stanford University, he mentors at the StartX incubator, and was formerly a consulting professor. During his career at Stanford, Singapore and Australia, he devised medical imaging technology for visualizing stem cell migration and therapy. He used to design semiconductor chips at Marvell, a NASDAQ-listed Southeast Asia success story which he hopes his portfolio startups could one day emulate.

Kevin DarmawanFounder & Managing Partner

Kevin specializes in early-stage investment with a deep approach in product management discipline. His passion lies in people development where he helps founders in a practical way and rolls-up-sleeves with them in product iteration, market fit analysis, and guiding them to build sustainable and profitable ventures. This approach has created notable success by generating considerable value in startups he is involved in.

Prior to the startup industry, he was a software engineer and tech consultant in North America servicing clients such as IBM, eFunds, Compuware, Yamaha, Suzuki, and Mazda. His international experience was complemented by his role at Salim Group, one of the largest conglomerates in Southeast Asia, where he took on alternative investments, organizational change, and strategic leadership.

Oded has 15 years in global tech investments and operations under his belt in consumer Internet, enterprise, healthcare, cleantech and cybersecurity, and has been a bridge between his network in Silicon Valley and Israel. His investments include Face.com (acquired by Facebook) and HopStop (acquired by Apple).

Currently, he is a Partner at Rhodium, an early stage investment arm of a large Israeli/NYC family where he manages the US activities from Silicon Valley. He is also the owner and CEO of Hermoni Investments, a private US investment and consulting firm. He is also the Co-Chair of J-ANGELS, a leading angel club with 70 angels, and Co-Chair of IEFF, the largest professional Israeli organization in the US with 1200 members. In additional, he is a screening committee member of TIE Angels, one of the most active angel groups in the US.

In his prior experience, he was a cofounder at Top Idea (acquired by Yellow Pages), the head of the Israeli High Tech Industry Association, Israel’s largest tech organization and President of the Israeli Venture Capital Association, VP of Investments and Biz Dev at Capital Point Group and Meytag High Tech Ventures, and an officer at the IDF (Captain res.). Oded holds a BA and an MBA from Hebrew University, Jerusalem.